


The Unexpected After

by Revieloutionne



Category: Super Sentai Series, Super Sentai Strongest Battle, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2020-12-27 08:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21115421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revieloutionne/pseuds/Revieloutionne
Summary: So howdoyou move on from trying to destroy the universe, anyway?





	The Unexpected After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jobber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jobber/gifts).

Rita knew that this was not actually meant as a comforting feature, but the fact that her cell was not a nearly featureless white void did a lot to help her feel like being taken into custody by SPD could help her life improve.

Sometimes.

A little.

There was also the fact that apparently nobody had any record of her home planet existing, although Doggie Kruger insisted that the name sounded familiar, which wasn’t a comfort, so much.

But then back on the first hand, due to the fact that her attempted destruction of the universe had only resulted in knocking over a couple mountains on an uninhabited planet, and nobody could possibly know who she had actually stolen her wish _from_, so there was nobody to press any charges, aside from the true guardian of the Moebius Connection, who was good-natured enough about the whole thing that all he required from Rita was a promise that she not try anything like that again.

But then back on the depressing hand, apparently she was as much a failure at evil as she had been at good, and she wasn’t sure what options that left her with. She’d actually been free to leave some weeks ago, and SPD offered plenty of help in setting a new life up for her, but she had nowhere to go.

She was finishing up her reading – she might not be able to succeed at being a good witch but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find positive uses for the spells in her ancient texts – and was about to get ready for bed when Doggie knocked on her door.

“What now?” Rita asked.

“I just thought you might like to spend a moment on the roof and take in the night sky,” Doggie said. “You’ve been cooped up in here far too long.”

“I thought that’s what jails were for, Commander,” Rita said, but she did let go of the hair tie she’d been about to pull out and head toward the door.

“Typically, yes,” Doggie said, opening the cell door, “but you aren’t typical.”

* * *

“You forgot about light pollution, didn’t you?” Rita asked, looking up from the city at the few dim stars she could see.

“Not at all,” Doggie said. “My w—Swan—our resident tech expert found a solution for that, I just thought you might take in the cityscape as well.”

“Uh-huh.” Rita said, looking out at the city stretching away despite her teasing. It pained her to admit that seeing a city this size without any burned out or broken down or actively destroyed areas _was_ a wonder to observe, so she didn’t.

“Well, if you’d rather get right to the stars...” Doggie said, pulling a small dome from his coat and setting it on the railing in front of him. As he turned it, the lights of the city all appeared to dim, and the night sky gradually filled in, until—

“That’s the Clouded River!” Rita exclaimed, pointing. “And Tita in his chariot! The tombstone, and the flower, and Barg!”

“I assume you refer to constellations?” Doggie asked, as Rita continued listing names and objects Doggie had never heard applied to the stars.

“What else would I be talking about?” Rita said. “Well, the Clouded River isn’t really a _constellation_, technically, but—”

“Constellations from your home sky?”

“Of course! It’s not like I ever bothered learning any other...” Rita said, finally connecting the things she already knew that told her what this meant. “But this isn’t—”

“It isn’t.”

“But how—”

“It could have been, but something went differently in this universe,” Doggie said, “long enough ago that a _lot_ of things went differently in this universe.”

“So I can’t go home.”

“It’s highly unlikely,” Doggie said, “but it didn’t seem to me that you particularly wanted to.”

“It’s still home, y’know?”

“Fair enough. I should have suspected sooner. I know for a fact one contestant in your battle came from a different universe than I did; of course I should have considered you might have as well.”

“But you thought you’d heard of my planet before.”

“Yes, that was part of it.”

“How did you know I would know this sky?” Rita asked. Doggie seemed about to respond a few times, and then gave up. “So this was a surprise for you too, huh?”

“I suppose you could say so.”

“Can you turn that thing off? That sky is way freaky now.”

“Oh! Of course,” Doggie said, bringing the city lights back up and pocketing the device. “SPD does run meetings for accidental travelers from other dimensions, and I think it might help you find a place here if you were to meet some people who have already done so.”

“That makes sense.”

“I suspect you’d like some time to yourself. I’ll leave you to it,” Doggie said, entering the stairwell down from the roof and pulling out his SP license. His voice carried out to the roof as the door swung shut. “Ban, I’d like to request a visit from one of your teammates when you can spare her for a mo—”

Rita leaned against the railing, taking in the city lights. This had been an eventful day. Maybe she’d dream about something else for once.

* * *

She didn’t. Once again, she was huddled with her best friend in their secret hideout. Once again, she cast the spell to save her. Once again, it went wrong, Again, she froze in terror and could do nothing but watch as her friend slowly sank into the swirling tunnel of smoke that billowed down where the ground once was. Again, she heard the pure terror in her friend’s voice as she called to her for help. Again, she wanted desperately for things to go differently this time; she knows this is a dream, she should be able to change it. Again, it happens exactly the same; only once her friend has passed completely below level of the ground does she break through her terror and move, as her friend suddenly rocketed down the tunnel and it dissipated.

* * *

The meetings helped. Not with the nightmare, but she’d had years to become used to that. They helped with figuring out how to start from scratch, how to find work with no provable history, even how to deal with the loss of direction that comes with a thwarted evil plot. (She chose to believe being the only one in that position in the meetings not videoconferencing from prison meant that she was lucky, not that she was a failure.) She still didn’t have a direction in life, but as she adjusted to life on Earth, where justice _hadn’t_ failed, where it was possible to live a quiet life doing something helpful, she was getting used to the idea that maybe that quiet life was enough.

That some tiny quirk of fate had left her home in another universe so overrun with injustice still _infuriated_ her, but she could admit now that Stinger had been right, that this was a sign she still cared about right and wrong, still wanted good to prevail.

Occasionally the meetings would host as a guest speaker a universal transplant who had really gone out and made a name for themself, and this time it was a woman on SPD’s Fire Squad. There was something about her that was holding Rita’s attention intensely but she couldn’t put her finger on it until the speaker told a story about one of her bad early days and followed up the litany of misfortunes with “and it just leaves you feeling like ‘die, universe!’, you know?” and Rita suddenly realized she’d been seeing the same face, 15 years younger, every night for the last 15 years.

“Sylvia?!” Rita shouted, leaping out of her chair and rushing to the front of the room, daring the universe to prove her wrong, and twice as hard to fail.

“How did—I haven’t gone by that—Rita?!” Sylvia replied. “Is it really—”

“I can’t believe—”

“How did you—”

“You’re okay?”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“I thought I killed you!”

“Oh god that sounds like I blamed you.”

“Oh my god wait.”

“I would never blame you I just—”

“Wait the spell worked.”

“Like if you could come too why did it take so long?”

“The spell worked!”

“What?”

“Okay, yeah, it absolutely didn’t do it the way I wanted it to, but it protected you!”

“Wait, you thought you _what_?”

“It sent you somewhere safe!”

“You didn’t know?”

“How could I?”

“You spent all this time not knowing I was—” Sylvia wrapped Rita in the most comforting hug she could. “Oh, Rita, I’m so sorry. That must have been _terrible_.”

“To put it lightly.”

“I can’t even _imagine_.” Sylvia pulled back from the hug and clapped her hands on Rita’s shoulders, giving her a serious look. “Listen. I have to finish my talk here, because getting leave from Fire Squad is very serious business, but then we’re going out for Indian food – I don’t know if you’ve had it yet but it’s suuuuper close to what we had at home – and we’re going to tell each other _everything_. Okay?”

“I… may have tried to destroy the universe.” Rita said.

“Well,” Sylvia said, blinking, “you’re not trying _now_, so there’s clearly a story there.”

* * *

The two were heading out of the building when Rita spotted Doggie, and excused herself for a moment.

“So you’d heard of my planet before,” Rita said.

“I had,” Doggie said.

“My planet that didn’t exist in any records anywhere.”

“Correct.”

“And when I recognized all those constellations, you remembered where?”

“Confirmed, actually.”

“So you took me up there with a plan? But you said you were surprised that I—”

“I said _you_ could say that I was,” Doggie said, “which is true. You can say whatever you like.”

“You could be a good politician with that kind of misdirecting,” Rita said.

“You could be a good detective with your memory and your eye for details,” Doggie said.

“I could,” Rita said, “but I think I’d rather be a good witch.”

**Author's Note:**

> Me, scraping the tiny slivers of canon information Toei bothered providing for Rita into a thimble: Don't you worry, you poor things, I'm going to find you a good home full of love and room to grow and make everything better


End file.
